


Company

by MissNaya



Category: Batman: Arkham (Video Games), DCU
Genre: Angst, Beating, Bondage, Branding, Kidnapping, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Past Underage Sex, Psychological Trauma, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 07:57:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12907581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissNaya/pseuds/MissNaya
Summary: The Arkham Knight is determined to make sure he isn't the only Bat that's been ruined.





	Company

**Author's Note:**

> yet another commission, this one quite a bit darker than the others. I have to thank [toomanyfandomsneverenoughtime](https://toomanyfandomsneverenoughtime.tumblr.com/) for this gem of a request! y'all know I love writing angst the way misery loves company.

“Jason, you don’t have to do this.”

“You keep saying that.” Jason cuts Dick’s mask off with a pair of long, sharp scissors that feel cold against his skin. “It’s not gonna change my mind.”

After Jason peels the spandex away from his face, Dick shakes out his bangs to keep his vision from being obscured. Not that it matters much; there’s not a lot to see in the tiny room he’s trapped in. It smells stale and rotten, the air tinged with ages-old sweat like a locker room. Under that, more pungent, Dick can smell lingering traces of blood and piss and long-unwashed clothes. There’s a heated, metallic scent coming from somewhere nearby, but he can’t see the source — a defective furnace, maybe, one whose warmth doesn’t make it to the far reaches of the room.

Jason has already “introduced” the basement to him formally. It’s where he was kept by the Joker long ago. In front of him sits the wheelchair where Jason spent most of his days, bound with barbed wire that still hangs there, rusted and bloody. If Dick leaves his eyes unfocused, he thinks he can see Jason’s shape lingering there like a ghost. He himself is bound with rope and a pulley hanging from the ceiling; it feels cool, too, like Jason’s spirit has split off in two places, and one hangs with him.

There’s certainly nothing left of that spirit in the real Jason’s blank eyes.

“I know you’re hurt.” Dick sucks on his lip, already split after the brief and brutal fight that landed him here. “I know you think we let you down. But—”

“I  _ think? _ ” Jason’s eyes narrow with a venom that Dick can feel pulsate in his veins. “You  _ left _ me. You _ stopped looking. _ Even before he pretended to kill me.”

The fact that Jason never shouts makes it all sound worse. His voice wavers, it cracks, but he doesn’t raise it. There’s a calm, methodical air about him that tells Dick he won’t be easily swayed by emotion. It’s clear he’s thought this revenge plan through for a long time.

“We did all we—”

“Shut up.”

Dick clamps his lips shut as Jason rounds on him, circling him like a predator. With his heavy armor and closed-off posture, he feels farther away than ever before.

“If it were you, he never would’ve stopped,” Jason says. Dick opens his mouth to protest, but he’s cut off. “He’d have torn this city to shreds before he gave up on you. Bet that’s what he’s doing right now.” He stops, and, next to Dick’s ear, says with a heavy implication, “I wonder how long it’ll take before he finds you.”

Then he walks off, and Dick strains his neck to look back at him. It’s no use, though. The basement is too dark, the angle too odd. All he can hear are Jason’s footsteps, and the metallic scrape of something heavy being pulled across a surface.

“It’s okay,” Jason calls. “We’ll  _ play _ together ‘til then.”

When he comes back into Dick’s line of sight, he’s carrying a crowbar. He rests the heavy weight of its curved end in the palm of his hand.

“One of Joker’s favorite toys,” he says with a curl of his lip. Then he slams it into Dick’s gut.

His breath lost to him, it’s a small consolation that Dick can’t even scream the next few times the crowbar comes down. It cracks into his ribs, dislocates his shoulder, and sends a shooting pain up his knee in turn. He feels like a pinata, strung up and swaying under the assault, but the only thing that comes out of him is the blood that drips messily from his mouth.

He can’t breathe again until Jason stops. When he inhales, it feels like knives stabbing into his side, and he coughs out more blood until he starts to see stars. That’s at least one broken rib for sure.

“He never hit me in the face, not with that,” Jason says almost conversationally, dropping the crowbar. He’s breathing heavier, too, but Dick’s not sure if it’s from exertion, or simply from his own bubbling rage. “Clipped my face a couple times, but never bashed my brains in. That would’ve been too kind.”

“Sorry,” Dick says, his voice like sandpaper. “‘M sorry he did that— t’you—”

Before he can say “but,” Jason grabs him by the chin, fingers digging into his cheeks. Roughly, he turns Dick’s head back and forth, looking him over like he’s inspecting livestock.

“You’re pretty,” he says, not as a compliment. “Barely a scratch on you. Guess not even criminals want to mess with the view.”

Suddenly, it makes sense why he wanted his mask off. Dick hopes Jason doesn’t take the sympathy in his gaze the wrong way. Jason’s eyes, in turn, look nearly black. They stare like that for an uncomfortable amount of time, until Dick wavers and glances down at Jason’s brand. At all the scars crisscrossing his face.

Shit.

Jason’s nostrils flare a second before he shoves Dick’s head away. “You know why I wear a helmet?” he asks. “I’ll give you a hint: it’s not just to protect my identity.”

“Jason,” Dick starts, voice thick with pity. He knows it’s a mistake the second it leaves his mouth.

“Every day,” Jason says, stalking somewhere behind him again. “ _ Every day _ I look at myself, and I remember it all over again. The helplessness, the fear; everything. And he knew I would. From the second he took me in, Joker knew he had me forever, whether I escaped or not.”

“You can move past this,” Dick says. A thin film of blood has begun to coagulate between his lips; he licks it away and keeps talking. “Your scars aren’t you. They don’t have to define you.”

“Yeah?” There’s a challenge in Jason’s tone, something light and haughty that makes alarm bells go off in Dick’s head. “You think so?”

Dick pauses. He tries to figure out what the best reply would be, then decides there isn’t one.

“...Yeah. I really do.”

“Good.”

Jason starts walking back toward him, and Dick smells something odd. It’s that hot, metal smell, but it’s moving closer this time. It dawns on him a second before Jason appears, carrying with him a long stick that glows yellow at the end.

“Jason, don’t,” he says too quickly. He starts to move, toes scraping against the floor as he sways, but the sudden jolt sends fresh pain circulating through most of his body. “This won’t change anything. It won’t fix what’s wrong with you, you need  _ help. _ ”

True as it is, it doesn’t go over too well. Jason moves forward slowly, as if delighting in his struggle. His face shows nothing positive, though, not even the quirk of a lip; he just stares at Dick with all the intensity of an arsonist watching something burn.

“I can’t get help,” he says, almost as if in a trance, “but I can feel less alone.”

Despite his earlier insistence, Dick can’t chase away the fear that creeps up in his chest as Jason gets closer with the brand. All he can think about is the immediate, permanent collision of his vigilante and civilian lives; how even a mask won’t stop villains from connecting Nightwing to Dick Grayson, and Dick Grayson to everyone else. He imagines all their lives crumbling down into ruin along with his own.

“Do you want me to admit I was wrong?” he asks. “I was wrong, Jason, and you’re right. I don’t know how it is for you, okay? I don’t know. And I’m  _ sorry. _ It— It’s gotta hurt like hell to live like that every day, and I’m telling you right now that I can’t handle it, I can’t do what you can.  _ Jason! _ ”

Dick realizes once they’re practically nose-to-nose that he should’ve spent less time reasoning and more time kicking. Jason traps one of his legs easily between his own, and the other doesn’t have much range of motion after being knocked around with the crowbar. He tries to turn his head away, but Jason grabs his chin with an even tighter grip than before.

“Don’t cry,” he says. “Crying will make it hurt worse.”

Dick’s world blanks out. All he can see is the yellow heat of the brand lifting closer to his face ( _ J for Joker, J for Jason _ ); all he can hear is his own frantic pleading, a cacophony of “No, Jason, nonono, please, just wait, please don’t do this  _ Jason please _ ” before the left side of his face explodes in pain.

He screams like he’s never screamed before, screams despite the way it tears at his broken ribs like a pair of monster’s hands yanking him open. He hears his own flesh sizzling,  _ smells _ it like burning meat, and his body rocks uselessly in place, unable to writhe away. He’s surprised to feel himself go numb after a moment in the thin places where metal touched skin, but the area all around the brand aches with the sort of constant burn he thinks sinners must live with in Hell.

Then Jason drops the iron with a heavy  _ clash, _ just like he did with the crowbar. His legs stay tangled with Dick’s, and his free hand comes up to join the other at Dick’s chin. The way he touches around his face is almost reverent, compared to how tightly he squeezes down on his thigh.

Once Dick’s wailing subsides, he becomes very aware that they’re both panting. Stranger still is the way Jason’s lips hover practically atop his own.

“There,” he breathes. “Now everyone will…”

He trails off. Dick realizes with a sinking clarity, like liquid nitrogen down his back, that Jason is hard against his leg.

“Jason.” Dick’s voice cracks in a way that it hasn’t since he watched his parents die. “Jason. P-please. Y-you need to—”

“Poor puppy,” Jason says, and Dick knows then that there’s no getting through to him. Jason is lost in his own mind, locked there to stew in whatever madness Joker left for him. “It’s okay. He made me like it, too.”

Even as Jason’s hands trail down his body and tug at the torn fabric where the crowbar cut through, Dick’s heart breaks for him. He shivers like they’re stuck in the arctic together, like his burning cheek is the only source of warmth for miles, the only thing Jason can cling to for hope of survival.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until a salty path of tears cuts through his brand. That  _ does _ make it hurt worse.

Jason’s large hands roam over his bare skin once enough of his uniform is torn away. He mouths at Dick’s neck, but it’s stilted and passionless. Were it not for the stiffness of his cock, Dick would think he was being forced into intimacy at gunpoint.

“I was a virgin,” Jason continues, “when he took me. I know you’re not, but still…”

Dick wants to vomit. Of everything he’s learned about Jason tonight, realizing that he’s been raped has got to be the worst. He wants to take Jason into his arms, hug the pain away, but at the same time, he wants to twist and scream and get as far from him as possible.  _ Two wrongs don’t make a right, _ he wants to say, but all he can manage is “Please don’t” while Jason ruts against his leg.

It’s no use. Of course it isn’t. Dick feels like the world starts to move in snapshots: all of a sudden, his back is to Jason’s chest. Something wet and slimy prods up against his hole. And then, an indefinite amount of time later, Jason is rocking into him, arms around his waist, not nearly enough lube to keep either of them from getting hurt. Dick stares down at a stain on the concrete and wonders which one of them is sobbing.

The final snapshot comes in the form of Jason above him all of a sudden, Dick lying bound on the cold, hard floor. A distant light from the top of the stairs glints off of Jason’s helmet as he slides it back on, transforming back into the Arkham Knight as if he’d never bared himself at all.

“This is Batman’s fault,” he says as he starts up the steps. “Just so you know.”

**Author's Note:**

> I post extra stuff on my [tumblr!](https://dicktofen.tumblr.com/)


End file.
